Latest Cartoon

Question of the Day

Have you been impacted by the government shutdown?

I was impressed by the artfulness with which Christina Bellantoni extolled the virtues and womanly triumphs of our new Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano (Sunday Supplement).

Her piece was easily worthy of the Times. The New York Times. Sadly for The Times' readership, however, Ms. Bellantoni was equally unperceptive in her reportage in Richmond. But after Sept. 11, covering the Cabinet leader charged with protecting the American homeland from terrorist attacks, one might have imagined a higher plateau.

Failure to include the secretary's pointed disinterest in and utter incomprehension of the nature of such attacks is simply breathtaking. Such attacks are glaringly calculated, coordinated and reasoned, and by no means simply “happenings” to be dealt with after the fact. Not recognizing the enemy is assuredly the pathway to defeat; a Cabinet secretary who views terrorism as “a man-caused disaster” is criminally clueless, and that is that.

Indeed, a “man-caused disaster” might be a careless union mechanic quitting at the bell with the torque settings on a Rolls-Royce jet engine mount not properly adjusted and leading to a fatal crash. Or perhaps Ms. Bellantoni herself would care to plead guilty for adding her few whiffs of woman-made CO2 to our atmosphere in driving her foreign car and thus imperiling the Earth with the pending man-induced global warming “disaster.” Surely this “man-caused disaster” is unlike the harbingers of our present war that were executed in Lebanon and Yemen as the Lexingtons and Concords of our time.

The new DHS chief clearly favors unsecured borders and the free influx of immigrants along with state protections, gratis public benefits and with the letter and the intent of our laws suppressed - all for one overarching and ill-disguised objective: the securing of the ultimate disadvantaged popular subgroup as the crowning jewel in the Democratic tiara. Chasing after imaginary arms shipments from the United States to Mexico and directing her agents to suppress their constitutional duties in order to singularly attack businesses after first depriving them of the tools necessary to ascertain their employee citizenship or legal status ought to have been other portions of the meat and potatoes of a story on this secretary. Too bad The Times missed it.